In Monday’s El País you’ll find an article about the tunnels linking Gaza to Egypt. It contains the usual jabs at Israel but has lots of interesting information too. Here are some excerpts.

Permission [to dig a tunnel] from the town hall, controlled by Hamas, is a basic prerequisite. It costs 10.000 shekels (2.000 euros) and is paid by the tunnel owners to ensure that the authorities  provide electricity to power the system of pulleys and carts which transport the merchandise. Pipes have been installed in some tunnels to transport fuel. By night they function at full capacity; bottled gas, drinks, food, clothes, electrical goods, motorcycles…

A lot of people are investing and getting rich now in Rafah. “Building a tunnel costs about 50,000 Euro. It takes 30 or 40 days to bore 200 or 300 metres but the longest one I know is 1400 metres in length.” explains Shurufa. At the mouth one of the tunnels looking down is enough to give you vertigo. Some have wooden crosspieces to provide some element of safety because 60 young people have died in collapses in 2008. Many climb up 25 metres without any kind of harness. They laugh at the danger.

Every 500 metres on the Egyption side of the frontier there’s a police post. They keep a careful eye on the flow of merchandise. Drugs and arms are prohibited. The armed wing of Hamas has its own tunnels for the supply of arms and explosives. “No one dares to break that rule. You have to sign an undertaking not to bring in illegal substances.”

Elsewhere in the text the number of tunnels is put at 1500. The people of Gaza are obviously under pressure, but this article - written a journalist who loathes Israel - should help put to bed talk of a humanitarian catastrophe there.